We don't want pyup.io upgrading sub-dependencies listed in the
requirements.txt file since it does it whenever a new version is
available regardless of what our application dependencies require.
The list of top-level dependencies is moved to requirements-app.txt,
which is used by `make freeze-requirements` to generate the full
list of requirements in requirements.txt.
This is based on alphagov/digitalmarketplace-api#615, so rationale
from that PR applies here.
We had a problem with unpinned packages on new deployments leading
to failed tests (e.g. alphagov/notifications-admin#2144) which is
why we're implementing this now.
After re-evaluating pipenv again, this still seems like the least
disruptive approach:
* pyup.io has experimental support for Pipfile, but doesn't respect
version ranges or updating hashes in the lock file
* CloudFoundry buildpack recognizes and supports Pipfiles out of the
box, but the support is relatively new. For example until recently
CF would install dev packages during deployment. It's also based on
generating a requirements file from the Pipfile, which doesn't
properly support pinning VCS dependencies (eg it doesn't set the
#egg= version, meaning pip will not upgrade the package if it's
already installed).
* pipenv has a strict dependency resolution algorithm, which doesn't
appear to be well documented and can cause some unexpected failures.
For example, pipenv doesn't seem to be able to install `awscli-cwlogs`
package at all, believing it to have a version conflict for `botocore`
(which it doesn't list as a direct dependency) while neither `pip` nor
`pip-tools` highlight any issues with it.
* While trying out `pipenv install` on our list of dependencies it would
regularly fail to install utils with a "Will try again." message.
While the installation succeeds after a retry, this doesn't inspire
confidence.
* The switch to Pipfile and pipenv-managed virtualenvs requires a series
of changes to `make` targets and scripts - replacing `pip install` with
`pipenv`, removing references to requirements files and prefixing
commands with `pipenv run`. While it's likely to simplify the overall
process of managing dependencies, it would require time to properly
implement across our applications and environments (Jenkins, PaaS,
docker containers, and dev machines).
> On Python 3.3 or newer, monotonic will be an alias of time.monotonic
> from the standard library. On older versions, it will fall back to an
> equivalent implementation.
– https://pypi.org/project/monotonic/
We've run into issues with redis expiring keys while we try and write
to them - short lived redis TTLs aren't really sustainable for keys
where we mutate the state. Template usage is a hash contained in redis
where we increment a count keyed by template_id each time a message is
sent for that template. But if the key expires, hincrby (redis command
for incrementing a value in a hash) will re-create an empty hash.
This is no good, as we need the hash to be populated with the last
seven days worth of data, which we then increment further. We can't
tell whether the hincrby created the key, so a different approach
entirely was needed:
* New redis key: <service_id>-template-usage-<YYYY-MM-DD>. Note: This
YYYY-MM-DD is BTC time so it lines up nicely with ft_billing table
* Incremented to from process_notification - if it doesn't exist yet,
it'll be created then.
* Expiry set to 8 days every time it's incremented to.
Then, at read time, we'll just read the last eight days of keys from
Redis, and sum them up. This works because we're only ever incrementing
from that one place - never setting wholesale, never recreating the
data from scratch. So we know that if the data is in redis, then it is
good and accurate data.
One thing we *don't* know and *cannot* reason about is what no key in
redis means. It could be either of:
* This is the first message that the service has sent today.
* The key was deleted from redis for some reason.
Since we set the TTL to so long, we'll never be writing to a key that
previously expired. But if there is a redis (or operator) error and the
key is deleted, then we'll have bad data - after any data loss we'll
have to rebuild the data.